


my skin is broken out

by orphan_account



Category: Glee
Genre: Anorexia, Canon Gay Character, Canon Queer Character of Color, Eating Disorders, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-11
Updated: 2012-08-11
Packaged: 2017-11-11 22:20:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/483481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first thing she learns is this: hospitals aren’t white, they’re beige. Tan. White is too bright and aggressive, both for the sensitive eyes of crying relatives and the sensitive eyes of dying patients. She stares at the ceiling and pretends it’s sand, pretends she’s lying face down on a beach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my skin is broken out

**Author's Note:**

> Rating is for eating disorders, body disphoria, self-loathing and major character death.

The first thing she learns is this: hospitals aren’t white, they’re beige. Tan. White is too bright and aggressive, both for the sensitive eyes of crying relatives and the sensitive eyes of dying patients. She stares at the ceiling and pretends it’s sand, pretends she’s lying face down on a beach.

The hours tick by and she feels weaker every second. She feels like someone cut time in new sections especially for her, smaller than seconds but that still stir up for longer. She doesn’t move from fear of finishing the job herself.

_(from fear she’d let herself do it.)_

She dreams of fairytales gone wrong, colors too bright and too dense and princesses that don’t need to be saved, don’t want to be saved, and are beyond saving now. She dreams of old demons and a crying face, holding her hand with a grip like a vice, like the night folding up on her. A grip that says _I bet I can make you talk, I bet I can hold your body and shift it inside out_ while she screams herself to wakening.

+++

She’s always alone when she wakes up.

  _I’m busy_ , her mom said. I’m busy and I work and there are things more important than you, and I’m busy.  She learnt in a few days that I’m busy really meant, _I’m afraid, you scare me_. She had brought a book, a story about two teenagers afraid of love and of life, afraid to let each other in and afraid to breathe, but it has been a while since she ran her eyes across the lines and threw it away from fear of recognizing the book is about her. She’d brought thoughts and frustrations to throw against walls but they are long gone and the only emotion left is resignation.

She had brought a friend, a friend to kiss and to hold and a friend to tell her that it would be fine, a friend to steal her and bring her back to the real world where she belongs, but the friend was afraid of breathing and afraid of Quinn, afraid to look into her eyes and see the sickness, the disease, afraid of admitting Quinn was a goner, and the friend left.

_(and the friend left memories)_

She’s always alone when she falls asleep.

+++

She thinks of the friend, the nameless crying face, sometimes: the friend still has a life, a place in the real world beyond the tan walls, and she must be living it for better for worse and without thinking of Quinn.

_(without thinking at all)_

She thinks of her friend doing normal things: brushing her hair and going to school, talking to real people, away from the winter girl and the cold airless space of the hospital room. She thinks of her friend walking and her weight pulls her down to the pavement, unlike Quinn who would fly away and dissolve into thin air if released from the ward, like a child letting go of the balloon’s string.

While pushing her hair back behind her ears that day Quinn cuts her temple on the sharp bone of her wrist.

+++

Days pass and she weighs less and less instead of growing stronger, like her mind convinced her body to act accordingly, to hate itself as she hates herself, and she thinks back to her mom’s fear that she would grow to be inelegant and fat, and she thinks she could just grow wings and fly away and the wind wouldn’t hold her down.

That night her friend comes to see her: the nurse whispers _Santana’s here to see you_ and Quinn can’t tell if she is still dreaming. She raises unfocused, too light eyes upon the face and doesn’t recognize its build, only serious and dreaded brown eyes that rake Quinn’s body in the search of something.

The dream turns into a nightmare when the eyes start to cry and Quinn realizes they never found what they were looking for.

+++

Santana is still there clutching her face into her hands, holding her breath, and Quinn who has been talking to herself all afternoon finally gets to direct the pain in her words to somebody else.

“You should be happy, you know,” she utters past her dry lips. “This is how I’ve wanted to be. You should be happy for me.” She’s purposeful, just trying to hurt, trying to get the well-meaning unhappy friend away so she can be free.

She should feel lighter when Santana gets up to leave, but a chunk of unhappiness drops in her empty stomach, heavy and surprisingly solid, when she smirks at her with heavy-lidded eyes and replies, “I didn’t sign up for this, you know. All I ever wanted was a quick fuck.”

The door slams shut and the shockwave bends her bare body backwards and sends her into unconsciousness again.

+++

She dreams of childhood with her friend, before high school and her family weighed upon her and set the rules of her appearance, before the cheerios looked at her sideways for getting fatter and fatter, before her baby and her love were taken away. She dreams of the short and chubby but always happy girl she was, and she thinks of the ever-lasting friend Santana has been.

The dream doesn’t last long, though, and when she wakes up she is still trapped inside this body and this mind but at least Santana is there, still there through thick and thin, and she whispers an apology because it’s the least she can do.

Her lips taste bitter and lost.

+++

The next day brings no visits but a nurse that looks at her with the empty eyes reserved to those that will be leaving soon, eyes that scream _I can’t get attached to you because you won’t be staying_. Quinn thought she would be relieved to know, relieved to learn she would be leaving, but instead she clings to ridiculous and meaningless goals she has to achieve before that:

Get thinner, thinner, weigh less and less until she can jump off the window and fly away instead of falling. Live forever and hold Santana in her arms as she goes and crosses the gate to heaven. Have an ice cream without worrying it might be too much. Hold Beth and tell her _don’t ever be like me, don’t ever be a mess._

Live.

She starts crying without noticing, big ugly tears she doesn’t bother to stop and that run on her cheeks, her chin, down her neck, soaking her blouse. She only ever wanted to be thinner. She only ever wanted to be pretty.

When she starts screaming they sedate her and she trips into the darkness afraid she isn’t going to be returning.

_(But she does. She always does.)_

+++

Quinn had come to this place so sure of herself, sure that waking further down the road was the good thing to do, the good thing to be

_( but now she’s walking barefoot for miles and miles on shattered glass and sharp stones that cut deeper than her skin, deeper than her flesh, while her blood blossoms on the ground into patterns of endless pain)_

But now she’s not sure there’s an end to the road, she’s not sure she can make it that far.

+++

Maybe she was wrong in thinking Santana was a real person with a real life, because Santana is always here now with her worried eyes always on Quinn’s skin like a nightmare.

(Maybe this is Santana’s real life.)

And the strangest thing is Quinn doesn’t seem to mind, and she talks back and gossips in her hoarse voice like she is back on her feet to McKinley, playing housewife with Santana in the hallways and ruling the school with a slushie cup in her hand.

The only difference is this time, she’s not hurting anyone but herself.

+++

Santana sits on the edge of Quinn’s bed, smiling like Quinn hasn’t seen it before: it’s not the mocking smile she wears while telling Quinn about the newest disaster on the cheerio squad, it’s not the scathing smile she wears when Quinn is too mean, too negative. It’s a Quinn smile like she hasn’t seen since they were freshmen and still excited for high school, the adventure that it should be. It’s Quinn’s in a way that nothing ever was.

She fidgets for a while and shoves her own clothes at Quinn, tells her to get dressed, they’re going out. Quinn doesn’t question it

_(especially since Santana’s perfume is everywhere now, sliding on her like water or warm hands)_

and doesn’t even comment on the size of the clothes, doesn’t comment on the fact the shirt falls on her like a nightgown and the pants are way too large, doesn’t comment on the fact she looks like a live skeleton, a dead girl walking.

They leave the hospital unseen and giggling quietly, like they’ve accomplished the impossible and freed Quinn from a prison, and Quinn sits in Santana her feet on the dashboard like she used to when they drove to school together or road tripped to cheer camp summer of freshman year. They drive aimlessly and end up at the mall, still singing at the top of their lungs and giggling with arms hanging off the car windows.

+++

They sit down at a coffee shop and that’s when it begins: Santana orders milkshakes for both of them and Quinn protests, she can’t have that: it’s too much, they’re already force-feeding her at the hospital, she’s not hungry.

_(she’s never hungry.)_

Santana looks at her with sad eyes and gets up to pay, throws away the two untouched milkshakes and says they’re going shopping then. They walk out, slowly because Quinn can’t keep up with Santana’s stride anymore.

_(Santana walks around like she’s still on a cheerleader formation, like she’s dancing around life or going down a catwalk, and Quinn can’t do anything but crawl around her days like someone broke open her legs, her hips.)_

Santana tries on clothes and smiles at Quinn, condescendingly because nothing fits Quinn anymore other than the hospital gown like a sheet over a dead body.

They bring her back on the evening to a scolding that is heard miles away and Santana is forbidden from visiting Quinn ever again.

_(That’s the last day she would, could have anyway.)_

+++

She had wondered for a long time what it would feel like to die, sometimes in abstract ways, much more present after Karofsky’s attempt, but always distant from her.

She always thought it would be hard and fast, like rushing out of the road on a car and down the hill screaming, and then nothing. Maybe plummeting down a hundred flights of stairs, maybe the wind on her face outside a building, every bone screaming in anticipation of the fall. What happens is very different, although she is alone too.

Her words tangle together and she can’t breathe: the air doesn’t get past her throat, doesn’t get till her lungs, and the lack of oxygen mottles her skin in red bruises and desperation, numbs her fingers and clouds her vision.

There’s a smile on the back of her head, the smile of a friend who never gave up, a lover who kissed her scars and sang her goodnight instead of leaving, a friend who held her hand and watched her leave the real world. There’s the sad smile of a girl she’d have wanted a future with, a girl who never made her eat, never made her leave. A friend who followed her into this land of winter and pain and that’d stay trapped there alone after Quinn left.

Santana isn’t there when Quinn dies, but that doesn’t make a difference.


End file.
